“The paper might have been inside the notebook,” suggested Lady Pinchingdale practically, wiggling to get a more comfortable purchase on the edge of her husband’s chair. “There’s no better place to hide a piece of paper than among other pieces of paper.”

Lord Pinchingdale shifted to make room for her, sliding an arm around her waist to steady her. She leaned her head comfortably against his shoulder, in a gesture of such affection and trust that it made Arabella’s throat hurt to look at it.

As Arabella watched, Lord Pinchingdale absently rubbed a finger along Lady Pinchingdale’s arm, a movement too small to be officially called a caress, and yet intimate enough to make Arabella look away. It reminded her of the casual intimacy of Turnip’s thumb stroking the side of her hand as they had sat together in the garden, her fingers twined with his.

Clasping her hands in her lap, Arabella hastily cleared her throat. “It would be an excellent way to get messages in and out of the school,” she babbled, not looking at anyone. “People were constantly in and out of that room, and no one would have remarked on the window being open. All you would have to do is reach through the window, extract the paper from between the covers, and exit by the garden gate again.”

She could see the tassels swinging on Turnip’s boots as he paced excitedly back and forth in front of her chair. “The first pudding was by the window too, wasn’t it? That’s where Sal said she found it. On the windowsill.”

“Pudding?” Lady Pinchingdale said warily from the vicinity of her husband’s shoulder.

“I’ll explain later,” said her husband. He looked at her with concern. “Are you all right?”

Now that he asked, Arabella noticed that Lady Pinchingdale was looking very green.

“Um-hmm,” she said, her lips pinched very tightly together. “Go on. Please.” There was a faint sheen of sweat at her brow.

“All right.” He dragged his gaze reluctantly away from the top of his wife’s head, looking from Turnip to Arabella. “In short, your villain might have been anyone at the school. We know Mr. Carruthers lost the paper while at Miss Climpson’s. It might have been extracted from him by nearly anyone there. We have no idea who took the paper or for whom it was intended.”

“We just know that they want it back,” contributed Lady Pinchingdale. Her lips had gone very pale. Even her freckles seemed subdued.

Turnip looked seriously at his old school friend. “Do you think if they have it, they’ll leave Miss Dempsey alone?”

Lord Pinchingdale raised one dark brow. “So one presumes.”

“Right,” said Turnip, squaring his shoulders. “Then we just have to give them what they want.”

“But I don’t have it,” said Arabella, to her own knees.

“Don’t you see?” Turnip’s eyes were blazing with excitement. He looked like a man whose team had just beat Rugby at rugby. “We give them a false list! We change names and places about. We rout the spy, stymie Bonaparte, and keep those demmed knives from your throat!”

Lady Pinchingdale lifted her head briefly from her husband’s shoulder. “That’s brilliant.”

“Two problems,” said Lord Pinchingdale. Both his wife and his friend shot him wounded looks. He held up his free hand in a gesture of self-defense. “Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m not disputing the desirability of the plan, simply the odds of executing it.”

“Care to translate that to English?” requested Turnip.

Lady Pinchingdale rolled her head over just enough to clear her mouth. “He thinks it can’t be done,” she said, and then rolled her face back into his sleeve.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” said Pinchingdale affectionately to the top of her head. “Succinctly put. Our first problem is that we haven’t seen the list. He has. He’ll spot a fake.”

“Not until he has it in hand!” said Turnip hotly. “And by then we’ll have pounced.”

He made a pouncing motion.

“Second,” said Lord Pinchingdale, pointedly ignoring the pouncing, “we run up against our fundamental problem. It’s almost tautological in nature.”

“English, Pinchingdale?” prompted Turnip.

“If we don’t know who he is, how do we communicate with him?”

“Ha,” said Turnip, folding his arms across his chest. “I already thought of that. We leave him a pudding.”

The mention of pudding proved too much for Lady Pinchingdale. From the crook of her husband’s arm, she made a slight gurgling noise.

“Will you excuse me, please?” she said faintly, and half stood, half slid off the side of the chair.

Face averted, she stumbled towards the door that connected sitting room and bedroom. What Arabella could make out of her face had gone greener than her green wool dress.

“Be right back,” she mumbled, fumbling at the doorknob. “Carry on without me.”

“She has morning sickness,” said Pinchingdale distractedly, his eyes following his wife. “And afternoon sickness and evening sickness. Excuse me for a moment.”

Pushing himself off his chair, he disappeared into the bedroom after her, leaving Arabella and Turnip momentarily unchaperoned.

Scooching down in her chair, Arabella looked at the gilded frame of the door, all but disguised by the paneling. “She reminds me of my mother. Not physically” — her mother had been tall and big-boned where Lady Pinchingdale was short and plump, fresh faced where Lady Pinchingdale was freckled, straight-haired where Lady Pinchingdale’s was curly — “but in spirit.”

It was nearly impossible to remember that Lady Pinchingdale was sister to the terrifying Lady Vaughn, scourge of wallflowers everywhere.

During their ballroom days, she had often shared a patch of wall with the former Miss Letty Alsworthy, but they had never done more than exchange a smile and a nod. Arabella wondered why they had never spoken. She rather wished they had. She had been so busy trying to pretend that she wasn’t there that she had missed the chance for a friend.

Arabella’s teacup listed dangerously to one side. Turnip plucked it from her hand. Lifting it to his nose, he sniffed the contents. “Letty must have emptied half a decanter in here. We’ll have to sober you up before tonight.” He hunkered down on his knees in front of her chair, looking up at her hopefully. “Unless you’d rather stay in your room?”

Arabella shook her head, making his features swim. “And miss the Epiphany Eve dance? I wouldn’t think of it.”

Turnip sighed. “That’s that, then.” Standing, he rested a hand on her shoulder, the only part of her showing above the blanket. “Won’t leave your side for a minute. I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”

For just a moment, Arabella leaned her cheek against his hand, letting herself savor the prospect of comfort and tenderness it offered.

Turnip’s hand lingered on her arm, protectively covering the slit in her sleeve. Through the corner of her eye, she could see his face, perturbed, his brows drawn together over his nose. “Arabella, I — ”

She knew what he was thinking. “Don’t worry,” she said, allowing herself, very fleetingly, the luxury of touching his hand where it covered her arm. She could feel the muscles in his fingers contract at her touch. “I’m not in any danger. This is England, not The Castle of Otranto. It is silly. The whole thing. Messages being passed in puddings, paper swords — it’s something out of farce, not tragedy.”

“I hope you’re right.” Turnip’s hand tightened protectively on her arm. “But I’m sticking by your side until we know for sure. Anyone who wants you will have to get through me first.”

Chapter 24

It took only five minutes at the ball for Turnip to lose Arabella.

The event was a small affair by the dowager’s standards. “A little entertainment for the country folk,” she called it, if a little entertainment could be held to comprise more than two hundred people, all rigged out in their very best. Tomorrow night, the long gallery at Girdings would be mobbed with fashionable folk come up from London, with peers and peeresses glittering with diamonds, but tonight the ballroom was crowded with an ill-assorted mix of the dowager’s country neighbors, the rarefied denizens of the house party, and guests come early for the following evening’s elaborate Twelfth Night festivities. The country squires, in their old-fashioned wigs and buckled shoes, looked askance at the pinks of the ton, with their elaborate cravats and painfully high shirt points, while the London matrons made moues at the heavy, full-skirted brocades and long curls of the country set.

“So last-century!” Turnip heard one hiss to another behind her fan. “Do you think someone ought to tell them?”

And they both snickered.

Turnip craned to see over the towering headdress of one of the country ladies, who looked as though she was wearing her hair in memorial of the late lamented Queen of France — or simply had a few birds’ nests piled in there. He had seen Arabella settled in her customary place by her aunt’s side not five minutes ago, safely tucked away among the wallflowers and the dowagers.

But now she was gone.

The space beside Lady Osborne on the settee was conspicuously empty. Captain Musgrave was still there, leaning over his wife’s shoulder, ostensibly whispering something in her ear even as his eyes scanned the room. Lady Osborne herself seemed entirely unconcerned, fanning herself with a feather-edged fan as she gossiped to the lady on her other side.

The villain couldn’t have abstracted Arabella from among a ballroom full of people, could he? Not in the first five minutes of the ball?

Turnip shoved and elbowed his way through the crowd, trying not to panic. If only he hadn’t let himself be distracted by Lady Henrietta Selwick — er, Dorrington — who insisted on smothering him in an embrace and then mocking his waistcoat.